Paint + Pipette

A blog on the art & science of creative action.

Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Unleash Your Inner Kindergartener

Puzzled by underwhelming results despite your expertise? Discover the surprising insights from a groundbreaking study that can help you tackle challenges and achieve better outcomes.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Declare an AI Recess

One critical reason folks in organizations aren’t imagining radical new applications of GenAI is, their imaginations aren’t stimulated. My recommendation might fly in the face of convention, but it’s been demonstrated highly effective in both this AI-moment and in times past.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

If AI Hasn't Made You Giggle, You're Not Pushing Hard Enough

For all the existential angst spilled regarding AI on the news, there's one danger I haven't heard get much attention. It's not the threat of sentient machines or the loss of jobs—it's the risk of AI disappointing us, not because of its limitations, but because of our own.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Practice in Community

Want to accelerate your pace of learning? Join a community of practice. We learn much more amongst fellow-learners eager to share insights from experiments conducted in radically different contexts.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Find Your People

New domains — whether hobbies or entrepreneurial ventures — are fraught with risk and failure. One way to hack the learning curve is to find fellow learners committed to the craft. Find your people, and you accelerate exponentially.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Express Appreciation

As holiday season comes upon us, it’s worth considering the outsized impact that simple gestures like expressing appreciation for others can have on our collective creative potential. One of the highest-ROI activities you can pursue is spurring someone else on in their craft.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Commit An Epiphany

Inside every single human being lies the potential to discover hence-unknown possibilities, to have an epiphany. My mission in life is to teach others the tools that turn that seemingly-magical moment into a methodical, repeatable reality.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Make Space to Fail

Business leaders should take a page out of one of the most brutally-straightforward innovation laboratories in the world: lessons from Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin’s stand-up routines.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Reflect on Experiments

Steve Martin’s reflection routine as a fledgling magician gives a masterclass in learning through experimentation: if you don’t reflect, you can’t connect the dots in unexpected ways.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Try Something Now

One of the greatest misconceptions in innovation is that folks start with a good idea. How rarely that’s true. Here’s to starting, followed by enlightened iteration.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Be Vulnerable

Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid Day Squares, flips the “perfectionist” script. Here he shares his unexpected formula for crafting deeply engaged fans.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Prioritize Learning

The single-most important decision I make weekly is to shed the “teacher’s cap” and put on the student’s. The only way to continue to inspire is to seek inspiration, myself.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Endure Rejection

A recurring theme on the road to creative mastery is how we (wrongly) perceive those who are successful as having never struggled. The truth is, many endured rejection.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Allow Folks to Play

If innovation is a numbers game, subject to considerable odds, then how can a leader bend the odds? IDEO’s Brendan Boyle says play is a key lever to drive the breadth of experimentation required to succeed.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Crystallize Your Knowledge

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Charles Duhigg explains how we can turbo-charge sense-making, and turn information into valuable knowledge.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Say, “I Don’t Know”

“I don’t know,” might be three of the hardest words to say, especially for a professor. A leader is often conceived as the one who knows. And yet, not knowing creates space for the unexpected to emerge…

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Be Willing To Be Bad

The best creators are constantly learning. There’s immense value in doing something you’re not good at, specifically for the sake of seeing an old thing from a fresh angle.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Make An Imperfect Attempt

It’s a grave mistake to assume that a spectacular outcome started out spectacularly. As Ed Catmull, Founder and CEO of Pixar says, “Our job is to take movies from suck to not suck.”

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